Monday, October 16, 2017

Malta’s leading investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a bomb blast on October 16, 2017. Caruana Galizia was
known for her exposures of the governing Labour Party of Malta and its leader,
prime minister Joseph Muscat. Muscat has strongly condemned the assassination
and pledged to bring perpetrators to justice.

Below is a rundown of known Malta-Azerbaijan connections,
including those investigated by Daphne Caruana Galizia (DCG):

In 2004-8 Muscat, then the Maltese member of the European Parliament, becomes member of the EP-Azerbaijan relations committee; around this time a former senior Maltese official Dennis
Sammut became involved in the EU-funded Karabakh Track II programs. Both Muscat and Sammut have regular contacts with Azerbaijani officials.

In December 2014, Malta PM Muscat visits Azerbaijan; documents signed
for Azerbaijan’s SOCAR launch of construction of an LNG facility in Malta.

In January 2015, companies associated with Azerbaijan's emergencies minister Kamaleddin
Heydarov open in Malta, formally led by Dubai-based dual Iranian-Azerbaijani national Manuchehr Ahadpur Khangah. All these companies were shut down by December 2015, after spending around 600,000 Euros. Link. Another link. In 2010, the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan prepared a background on Heydarov that mentions Khangah as Heydarov's frontman.

In April 2015, Malta PM Muscat makes another trip to Azerbaijan, this time to speak at the 3rd Global Forum in Baku.

In August 2015, Pilatus Bank is licensed in Malta. Bank owner is
Seyed Ali Sadr Hashemenijad, an Iranian who uses passport issued by St Kitts
and Nevis. Hashemenijad applied for the license in December 2013.

In September 2016, Farrugia heads “European Academy of
Elections Observation” during constitutional referendum in Azerbaijan.

In April 2017, DCG reveals that 60% of Pilatus Bank deposits are from Azerbaijani officials (with less than 100 clients overall). The bank's largest client is emergencies
minister Kamaladdin
Heydarov. Second and third largest clients are Ilham Aliyev's children: Heydar Aliyev Jr. (who first applied to Bank of
Valetta, but refused because of his political exposure) and Leyla
Aliyeva (via Dubai-based Al Sahra FZCO). Bank also had accounts of Maltese
officials (including PM’s chief of staff, energy minister and former Maltese EU
commissioner), as well as the son of Angola leader Eduardo Dos Santos (who, incidentally, studied in
Baku in Soviet times). On 4/19/2017 DCG reveals more than $1mln in money transfers from Leyla Aliyev to Michelle Muscat. On 4/20/2017 bank CEO Hashemenijad arrived in Malta to remove documents and/or cash from the bank to be flown to Baku and from there to Dubai.
DCG alleges Maltese government
cover-up.

The revelations came just days before Azerbaijan’s SOCAR inaugurated its LNG
facility in Malta on April 24, 2017 with SOCAR president Rovnag Abdullayev and
foreign minister Elmar Mamedyarov in attendance.

Following DCG's revelations, Muscat calls an early election for June 3. Muscat's party retains majority in Maltese parliament and Muscat is re-appointed as prime minister.

On September 5, DCG posts about a March 2017 report titled "European Values Bought and Sold" by the Freedom Files Analytical Centre that documents Azerbaijan's extensive "outreach" to Maltese politicians. The report cites a Baku-based source interviewed in 2016 as suggesting that Azerbaijani leaders are treating Malta as their overseas "province."

On October 16, 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia is killed when
her car explodes near hear house in Malta. Earlier this month she reportedly filed
a police report citing threats against her. Link Both CNN & BBC noted the Azerbaijan investigations in their coverage of the assassination.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

This image from 2008 war in South Ossetia is frequently used by Azerbaijani
news sites to illustrate reports from Karabakh. From google image search.

With low-intensity shooting incidents continuing between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Karabakh and elsewhere along the Line of Contact, local media reports tend to highlight occasional casualties and officially-issued statistics.

To anchor these often repetitive reports on the news sites, media on both sides rely on stock conflict images. Lack of familiarity with media rules and military matters and general laziness result in frequent confusion as far as the origin of images used. Frequently, images are copy-pasted from other sites, with no regard for copyright.

This is particularly pronounced in Azerbaijan, where media is legally prohibited from reporting on military matters without official sanction, reporters rarely get official access to the armed forces and those traveling in frontline areas are likely to be stopped and sometimes even beaten.

One of the common forms of conflict reporting in Azerbaijan is laudatory short stories about Armenian casualties - real and imagined - accompanied by stock photos of bodies in uniform, typically unrelated to the Karabakh conflict.

Thus one of the popular images used is by Brennan Linsley of AP Photo dated July 6, 2009 and described as "a U.S. Marine from the 2nd MEB, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, who was overcome by heat exhaustion, lies on a stretcher.. in the Nawa district of Afghanistan'". Linsley's photo found second life accompanying Azerbaijani reports of Armenian casualties, including on main regime-run sites, such as 1news.az and vzglyad.az.

Another image used is by Dmitry Kostyukov for AFP / Getty taken on August 10, 2008 and described as a body of a Georgian soldier on the outskirts of Tskhinvali during the war with Russia over South Ossetia. Kostyukov's photo can be seen in the Boston Globe's August 11, 2008 report about the war. The image - seen above in a Google search - has been used repeatedly by some of the most popular Azerbaijani news sites.

Finally, another recurring favorite (seen below in regular and enhanced versions) is an older image from Serbian-Croatian fighting in Bosnia taken on August 18, 1995 by Tom Dubravec of AFP/Getty and is no. 27 at this link.

In another example of this sort of careless copy-pasting, photo of a soldier wearing an Armenian camouflage pattern was used as a stand-in for an Azerbaijani soldier in a military education text book for high schools. Image grab below is from a social media site of an Azerbaijani journalist who noticed the text book gaffe.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Often called the 4-day war, the most intense period of April 2016 fighting was in fact limited to three days from April 2 to 4. The first day was also the bloodiest, with the Armenian military losing 35 servicemen, 22 of them on or near Laletepe, 4 near Seysulan and 9 in Talish-Madagis direction. Three elderly civilians and one schoolboy were also killed on April 2. 7 more servicemen and 1 volunteer were lost on April 3 and 20 servicemen and 12 volunteers on April 4. There were more losses in subsequent days, but active operations - efforts to capture or recapture territory - ended on April 4. Below are the names of these Armenian military personnel and volunteers.

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Screenshot of a video posted by Arshak Zakaryan, a
videographer who works with the Armenian Ministry of Defense, showing
the portion of Haramı Düzü, or "forbidden plain," where 5 Azerbaijani
soldiers died on February 25. White arrow points to the location of the
bodies between the Azerbaijani (left) and Armenian (right) trenches.

At least five Azerbaijani servicemen were killed on February 25 in
the worst flare-up of fighting over Nagorno Karabakh since last April.
As per usual, the Armenian and Azerbaijani press services published
versions of the incident at odds with one another.
The renewed violence comes as spring approaches and many fear an even
more serious bout of fighting than last April's, in which more than 200
were killed, itself the worst fighting since the ceasefire was signed
in 1994.

A February 21 meeting of Azerbaijan's Security
Council at which Azerbaijan's first vice president, first lady Mehriban
Aliyeva, was introduced. (photo: president.az)

President Ilham Aliyev’s February 21 announcement that from now on his wife Mehriban Aliyeva will be the country’s first vice-president elicited a good deal of mockery, including the inevitable comparisons to the plotline of the TV series House of Cards.
But beyond the jokes, the move appears to be the result of a deadly
serious tussle for power and influence within the ruling regime. While
intra-government cleavages have existed since Aliyev succeeded his
father in 2003, these tensions have intensified in recent years amid an
economic crisis and a substantial drop in Azerbaijan’s energy revenues.

President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia and de facto
president Baho Sahakyan of Nagorno Karabakh at a joint meeting in 2016.
(photo: president.am)

On February 20, the de facto republic of Nagorno Karabakh will hold a referendum on a new constitution
that would change the form of government from semi-presidential to a
fully presidential. It would also, as a result, allow incumbent
president Bako Sahakyan to retain his post beyond the current limit of
two five-year terms.

Unusually frigid February weather aside, Armenia's politics is
thawing out of its traditional winter slumber unseasonably early as it
looks ahead to an April 2 election that now appears far less predictable
than it had just a couple of months ago.

As in four preceding parliamentary elections, the ruling Republican
Party (RPA) is the presumptive favorite. But a half dozen alliances and
individual political parties are expected to offer some real competition
for seats in the new National Assembly. Pre-election buzz is real,
horse trading is in full swing, and even long-disappeared politicos are
reemerging to seek out places for themselves in the electoral lists.
What makes this election different is the new constitutional
framework that calls for transition of executive power from incumbent
president Serzh Sargsyan – who completes his term a year from now – to a
prime minister selected by parliamentary majority. That ups the stakes
in these elections, and the buzz is all around three individual
politicians.

Leading members of the Armenian Diaspora are looking to take on a
greater role in how Armenia is run. In a recent full-page ad published
in The New York Times, 23 Diaspora personalities from around the world
appealed to their compatriots to make “a long-term commitment toward
collectively advancing” Armenia.